Somebody That I Used To Know
by Ballanchinewriting2
Summary: "He's hung up on being somebody that she only used to know." After "Smoked" until a vague period in Season 13.
1. Part 1

Somebody That I Used to Know

He's watching her. That's for damn sure. Tonight he can see nobody but her, for tomorrow she'll be nothing more substantial than somebody that he used to know.

"And then El and I," Olivia pauses, shoots him a smile, her laughter barely contained. "Then El and I arrive on scene and there are all these hookers and Johns standing around, and three rookies that look like they just stepped into the Twilight Zone."

Fin, Munch, Casey and Cragen all chuckle with anticipation. Liv's a masterful story teller and she knows it. The overcrowded bar is noiseless without her voice. It's the only thing of any importance. It's never been particularly tinny and feminine, but its soft, enigmatic tones will remain with Elliot even when he's abandoned everything else.

"So I ask the rookies what's going on and one comes up to me stuttering 'ma'am this, and ma'am that,' when one of the hookers comes over. Her name was uh, uhm…" Olivia snaps her fingers, perfecting the art of delay.

"Her name was Sandi" Elliot offers quietly. He prefers to think he can exists on the outskirts of tonight, the quieter he is the less noticeable his departure will be.

"No, no. Candi" Liv says, gently grazing his chest with the back of her hand. "With an 'I.'" She scoots closer to him in the booth made for four, but accommodating six. He obligingly moves his arm so her shoulder can settle against his side. Her perfume overwhelms him and he swallows. It was that smell that surrounded him after he became someone he wishes he only used to know.

"Candi with an 'I'" Casey says, "God, sometimes I miss SVU. Never a boring day."

Elliot realizes that Casey's sadness, that glimmer hiding beneath the veneer of a successful job in Jersey, is what will inhabit his eyes for the rest of his years. It pricks at his heart, but he knows it's better this way. He's better being somebody that they used to know.

"So this Candi" Olivia begins again.

"With an 'I'" Munch adds.

Olivia graciously allows the story to tell itself. She won't beg for attention, to demand all eyes on her, she doesn't need to it. It's as natural to her as air. It's the entirety of these nuances about her that Elliot will miss desperately. Sometimes, when things aren't so impossible, he wonders if he couldn't hold onto everything that used to be.

"…So Candi comes up in the middle of this rookie's sad stuttering and is in full on diva mode. I'm talking snaps in a circle and lips so sparkly Nicki Minaj would be envious…"

Liv knows when to pause to let the scene settle on her audience. Sure enough, the others are enthralled waiting for the hilarity sure to follow. Elliot turns his head from her for a minute, just allowing himself to test how awful it's going to feel when he creates distance. He's never felt so lonely in her company before, and yet, the idea of deserting it is nothing short of horrific.

"Candi comes up to the rookie says 'squeeze me, who the hell are you calling ma'am? This is a miss, and ain't she fine'" Olivia says, giggling in anticipation of the punch line.

Elliot remembers a time when she didn't giggle, didn't smile. She came to SVU to bury herself in depravity to prove a demented point created out of loneliness. He likes to think he proved her mission invalid, that he tempered her self-loathing with peace. He likes to think that everything they used to be is what made them who they are today.

"Then, if the rookie wasn't thoroughly embarrassed, Candi says that she'll 'go willing into the hands of the less fashionably challenged.' She then sticks her hands out, offers me her pink handcuffs and says 'please, silver clashes with my shoes.'"

The table laughs just as their booze arrives. Three beers, a seltzer, a water and a bourbon. Fin, Munch and Casey reach for their Heinekens, Cragen reaches for the seltzer and Elliot accepts the bourbon. Olivia stirs the ice in her water.

"Water Liv, come on. It's your birthday weekend" Munch says, "You have to celebrate being over the hill before the hill's out of sight"

"Over the hill my ass, I'm 42" Olivia says, settling deeper into Elliot as a group of frat boys let in the early May wind. "But I have an early day tomorrow. Right Elliot?"

"Y-yeah" Elliot stutters out before taking another sip of his bourbon. Ever since he's known Liv, the Saturday before her birthday he's spent the day with her. Dawn until dusk. Whatever she wanted to do. Whether it was paperwork, go down to Rockaway, stare at the ceiling or run the length of Manhattan, he's been there. It's a tradition, something he wants to continue, but can barely imagine executing. He needs their life together to be something he used to know. There's a visceral need to beg her to collect her life and remove it from his.

"What are you two going to do?" Cragen asks, reminiscent of memories he's known them to make. Days when Elliot and Olivia chased perps until eleven fifty-nine and ended the day with 7-11 brownies, or nights when Elliot filled the cribs with balloons and told Liv she had to pop them all in five minutes, no guns allowed. He envies their partnership sometimes, wishing he too could find someone with whom he would always make sense.

"I don't have anything special in mind" Liv says languidly. She pulled a double the day before and its catching up to her. "When you're 42, you can't be picky"

"Bullshit," Casey says, sipping her beer. Her rings flash, her wardrobe has become the single sign that Jersey is rubbing off on her. When they exiled her from Manhattan, she found solace in something that wasn't quite her, but she conformed. Elliot's worst fear is that he'll gain the courage to leave only to arrive somewhere he'll never adapt to. "You, Olivia, will be picky until the day you die"

Olivia laughs at her friend, missing their time together. "Yeah, but seeing how quickly Elliot's downing the bourbon, we may spend the whole day nursing the hair of the dog"

Olivia nudges Elliot with her shoulder, making it a joke the table can chuckle at, but he knows she's worried. He's never been a big drinker, and he always shied away from hard liquor when he was with Olivia. They both thought he knew better. But it's one of those nights. It's the end of something he will only be allowed to call a 'used to,' after this.

"I have to make up for you" Elliot says, nudging her water. "And don't pretend that two years ago you weren't doing the same thing."

"What happened two years ago?" Cragen asks innocently.

"Nothing Cap" Fin says, waving him off.

Everyone laughs to themselves at the memory of Olivia's fortieth birthday. She and Elliot had broken into Cragen's secret stash and drank until they couldn't see. In a drunken haze they'd rearranged all the letters on the keyboards and name plates on the lockers, and then drunk dialed Casey in Jersey with some pressing warrant for Elliot's son's stuffed bear. Everyone remembers it as a great practical joke, a sign Benson and Stabler were finally 'fixed.' Olivia remembers it a bit differently. She remembers it as two weeks past when Elliot nearly bled to death from a smuggler's bullet; and a year out from her exile in Oregon. What the others considered harmless antics was the only way to keep her transfer request off Cragen's desk. Watching Elliot drown in the bourbon, Olivia is hesitant to assume that he isn't exactly where she was exactly two years ago. If she can only have one wish this birthday, it's that no pink sheets break up the only thing she knows well enough to call her own.

"That was a good night" Olivia concedes quietly, wrapping her hands around her cup.

Elliot notices the melancholy in her eyes then and he wishes he hadn't put it there. That year had been hard for her, and yet little does she know how difficult this next year could prove to be. She has no idea she's enjoying a life that she will soon have to say she only used to live.

"But not as good as tonight," Fin cheers, "To Liv!"

"To Liv!" the table echoes, glasses clinking.

Elliot forces a smile, wishing he didn't have to cut himself out. But he knows it's a lot easier to be somebody they used to know then somebody they wished they'd never known.


	2. Part 2

The door opens at five the next morning and Elliot stands before Olivia, unshaven and cradling a cupcake with a single candle burning in it.

"Happy birthday" he says, hoping his face breaks into a smile.

"Thank you" Olivia says quietly, stepping back for him to enter. She's changed apartments three times since meeting Elliot, settling just minutes from the precinct. Elliot wonders if it bothers her that even her realty reflects her career. Does she ever want SVU to be something she only used to know?

"I brought breakfast" Elliot says instead, dropping a muffin and fruit onto the table for Olivia.

"Perfect timing, I'm starving" Olivia says, taking a delicate bite of the muffin. "I worked through dinner yesterday and crashed after hanging with you all last night."

"What were you working on?" Elliot asks, feigning interest in all the aspects of his life he'll be glad to only used to know.

"Hannah Strauseburg case" Olivia says, fumbling with the wrapper. Elliot's brooding makes her uncomfortable. The memory of his bourbon swirling around in the glass makes her fingers lose all their grace.

"The military scientist?" Elliot asks, trying to maintain his former interest. "The one who was gang raped?"

"Y-yep" Olivia stutters, wondering when Elliot's disinterest turned in to heavily veiled repulsion detectable only by those who really know all he is. "I cracked it."

"That's great Liv," Elliot says, but she might as well have announced that she learned to turn on a light. Elliot's enthusiasm is as cold as the container of greasy eggs he opens and spoons onto burnt toast.

"The hangover breakfast. I totally called it" Liv says, the hint of teasing tempered with concern.

"Yeah, well. I can't drink on an empty stomach like I did years ago" Elliot says, watching her eat. They won't be doing this next year. Perhaps that's okay, perhaps he'll forget she likes vanilla muffins on her birthday, or that she picks the melon out of her fruit salad. Perhaps he won't miss it, or perhaps it will hurt like hell forever.

"Funny. It's my birthday, but you're the one realizing you're not as young as you used to be" Olivia says.

There's that damn 'used to' thing again. A silent sign of nostalgia for something you can't get back. Elliot wonders if he could live vicariously through the younger better version of himself.

"Yeah, well, a lot of things aren't what they used to be" Elliot says, taking a bite of eggs.

"Elliot" Olivia begins, watching him push the toast around in the egg grease. "Did you tell Kathy about what happened?"

"About the shooting? Yeah."

"Not the shooting," Olivia says softly, "About Jenna."

"Same thing" Elliot says.

"No they're not. Jenna was a rape victim's daughter. The shooting was an incident involving someone who'd become a threat to civilians. They're not the same."

"Olivia, you sound like Huang"

"You sound like you haven't spoken to Huang"

"You don't know that" Elliot deflects.

Olivia stares at her muffin, her appetite retreating. "Maybe not Elliot. But bourbon, missing shifts, not talking to your wife…I know too much about that."

"If you know so much Olivia, how could you forget that I've never been the type to spill my guts and risk someone else hurting too?"

"You could have talked to me. It's been 12 years. I thought that was something you knew. At least I thought you used to know it."

Used to know, used to have, used to be. Elliot's a fantastic study in longing for what once was. He wonders if he could ever recreate it, to just reach into the past and make it his present.

"Olivia, this isn't my first kill…"

"Jesus Christ Elliot!" Olivia exclaims, her breakfast forgotten now. "Must you be made of stone? Maybe I want to talk about it!"

"We already did Liv," Elliot whispers, willing to let one moment of weakness go untouched between them.

"Elliot, I'm sorry if I leaned on you" Olivia says, her voice betraying her distress. She's got those eyes on, the ones that are as large as saucers and stared at Elliot from across the bloody precinct floor. "Maybe I shouldn't have called you with the nightmares. Like you said, it's not your first kill nor is it mine…"

"Olivia stop" Elliot says gently, abandoning his eggs despite the roiling in his stomach. This time it has nothing to do with the bourbon, but rather the memories Olivia wants to dredge up. "Don't blame yourself. I can't take that"

"And I can't take this fear" Olivia says, pushing her fork away.

"What are you talking about?" Elliot asks, watching her. This isn't Olivia, not this fearful thing who's quick to blame herself and hesitant to seek a solution.

"I'm living each day in fear that I'll walk in and the only thing left of you will be a transfer request"

"Olivia…"

"Don't you dare tell me I'm wrong Elliot. I can't take another lie" Olivia says, "What's going on? Are you…" She doesn't want to say it. She doesn't want to think that they could so quickly become nothing.

"Am I what Olivia?" Elliot demands, tired of trying to read into every word she says.

"Are you burning out?" Olivia says, the air rushing out to carry her question between herself and the one person she thought it'd be okay to get hung up on all those years ago.

"Olivia," Elliot begins, "Do you want to do this on your birthday?"

"Don't try to make excuses Elliot," Olivia says, "Today is just another day. I want a damn answer, in fact, I deserve an answer. I'm your partner"

"I'm not going to say anything you want to hear" he says, and he can't believe that he's about to make her somebody that he only used to know. He never thought they'd live this way. "But in one word: yes."

"I want more than one word" she says, and her voice is strangled. She's not breathing, she's listening and alert for the moment someone tells her this is one huge awful joke. She'll wake up tomorrow and it will be her birthday and everything she used to rely upon will still be there.

"Fine Olivia" Elliot says, and if she wants to be masochistic he'll allow it. "If you want words then fine." If he can absolve himself of the guilt that way then he's not selfless enough to act differently. "I'm beyond burning out, I'm done. I wake up every morning sick to my stomach with the idea that I will strap on that gun and keep playing pretend. I don't want to save anyone else, I don't want to spend my days and nights hunched over a computer screen playing our perverted game of Clue. I just want to live my life without the guilt of being stuck in a game I wish desperately that I could be dealt out of."

"So that's just it Elliot" Olivia says, and there's anger in her voice. It's pitched higher, and it rattles the air. "You don't give a fuck about all the good you've done, or could do—"

"Don't feed me lines Liv," he says, "I left all the good I've done on the floor of the precinct when Jenna died."

"Elliot, when are you going to talk to someone?"

"Fuck Liv!" he exclaims, throwing out his arm and sweeping their breakfast to the floor. "When are you going to understand that talking to someone isn't going to take it out of my head!" He gets up then, flinging her pristine white chair into the countertop behind him and stalking into the living room.

To her credit, she flinches only once when the breakfast dishes go crashing to her linoleum floor. Elliot's temper isn't something she'll ever get used to, but it's something as sure as her own name. She quickly gets up, following him. "Are you done throwing fits?"

Elliot keeps his back to her, trying to control his breathing. "I'll clean it up."

"I don't give a fuck if it sits there till I'm 43" Olivia bites out, "But I won't let you try to scare me with a temper tantrum. If you want to leave SVU, you give it to me straight."

He turns then, looks into her eyes and suddenly 12 years comes flooding back. He sees her in those awful oversized suits smiling at him and offering her hand on her first day, he sees her face when she wakes from a nap in the cribs, but most importantly he sees someone who has so much ahead of her. She doesn't need a cop on the edge with burnout turning his passion to ash. She needs more than he is, and as he closes his eyes he's reminded that becoming somebody she used to know won't be easy, it will be for the best.

"Liv," he begins, "I've got to go. I can't hold it together anymore. Every victim makes me feel like there's no hope. I can't breathe sometimes I see so much red. I can't expect you to work with who I've become."

"Elliot" Olivia says, softening in fear that he'll leave her and there will be nothing she can say to make him hold on. "I want to keep working with you, whatever you I have. Maybe it's time we changed again? I'll do anything to make things how they used to be"

The 'used to' is what breaks him. It's what makes him cross the floor and wrap his arms around her. She's not crying but her body is cold as ice, and he realizes she's in shock. He never touches her unless something catastrophic has occurred, and here they are at the precipice of another such instance. He only wishes he could tell her he'd be there next time.

"Olivia, I won't ask that of you" he says, "You know it can't happen that way"

"Why not, Elliot?" she whispers into his neck. They don't touch, but if this is the end then screw all the rules.

"You know why Olivia" he says, "I can't work sex crimes and be this blinded by my own anger. I can't help people I resent, and I can't work beside you knowing how apathetic I am towards the entire situation."

She wraps her arms around him tighter then, wishing it all hadn't gone so sour. "You'll always have my back"

"No I won't," Elliot says, "Someone else will have it soon."

"We can work through this Elliot" she says, and he feels her nails dig into his back. She can't let them become something she used to know. As much as Elliot knows it hurts, he knows soon this will become nothing but an ache she used to know.

"I'm sorry, Olivia" he says, "But we can't. I don't want to. IAB's been ready to pull me for a while and I don't have it in me to stop them this time."

She pulls away then, pushing him from her. All the times he's screwed her over, she always thought it was something she'd done. She thought he could let it go and not get caught up in things she used to know. But now, she knows so much better. The clarity is stunning.

"So I don't get a say?" Olivia asks, and she's not fighting her tears. She's done trying to be unemotional when it comes to Elliot.

"I'd do anything else for you Liv" Elliot says, "But not this."

Liv takes a step back then and just stares at him. The air conditioner kicks on in the background, the neighbor's kid cries and someone's door slams, but Liv's life has gone dead silent. She's removed herself from her 42nd birthday and is rapidly remembering her 29th, her 36th. She wraps her arms around herself, the chill from Elliot's stairs in front of his home in Queens, from those leading to his apartment in the city, sinks into her bones.

_You're the longest relationship I've had with a man…_

She closes her eye against their history and paces to the window, glancing out. But she's unseeing, the only thing there are his eyes when she met him, when she left him and every morning when she says hello. It's hard to believe that everything she's so certain about will only be a used to. God help her, but Elliot will no longer be someone she knows.

Releasing her grip on the window sill, she turns to him, worrying her bottom lip relentlessly with her teeth. She sees his lip twitch, he hates that habit. But he's silent, waiting for her to say something, to see if she will acknowledge everything they used to be, or what they have to be now. She wipes the tears from under her eyes. This is only the second time he's seen her cry. Her breath hitches and he's stirred into action, reaching for her. She brushes past him though, rushing into her kitchen. She rifles rapidly through her cabinets, pushing aside expired cake mixes and box pasta salad to find the something she wants but doesn't need.

Elliot stands in her living room, the heat from her flesh where it brushed him off burns. It sears a little, but he knew that if they ever split it would be like the sun crashed into earth. A few flesh wounds were expected. Standing perfectly still, he hears glasses clink in the kitchen, a hiccupped cough and finally liquid splashes violently into two glasses.

"Here."

Liv is standing before him, her eyes red and teary and scary in dilation. A shot glass is thrust towards him.

"What is this? Hair of the dog?"

"Shut-up Elliot"

She hands him the bottle of vodka the shot originated from and then she's gone again. Elliot feels like he's on the Tilt-A-Whirl at Cony Island, begging to get off and walk in straight lines again.

"Sit."

She's back again, the dilapidated cupcake rescued from the floor rests in her hand. He falls onto the couch while she retrieves a lighter from her end table. She pulls out a pack of cigarettes too, lighting one and then touching the end to the lame-ass candle sitting lopsided in the melting icing. It lights and slides precariously to one side. He almost wishes it would fall, that the room would catch fire and they'd be the victims of a merciful accident. Anything than exist in this moment.

"Olivia, what are you doing?"

"Are you going to sing to me?" she asks. She hiccups on her tears and takes a drag on her cigarette.

"Sing what?" he asks gently, watching her hiccup again. She's worked herself into a near fit. The cigarettes, the hiccupping, the tears. He saw this Liv once. Right after her mother died. To think he's pushed her that far stands to their history, to all they mean to one another.

"The fucking National Anthem, Elliot" Olivia snaps. She hiccups again, and then exhales. The candle slides closer to the table and Elliot itches to knock the entire thing onto the flammable carpet. "It's my birthday Elliot. What do you think you should do?"

"I should go" Elliot says, and he knocks his shot back and begins to stand.

_"Don't you dare."_

Elliot ceases to move. He turns slowly towards where Olivia is perched precariously on the couch. The cigarette dangles from her fingers and her hair falls around her face in little girl waves. There's despair in her eyes, but it's tinged with anger. "Sing to me Elliot, because I know this is the last time we'll be together. You want to be somebody I used to know then you leave me something to remember."


	3. Part 3

Six shots apiece later, the vodka bottle rolls between them. Sometime around shot four they poured themselves off the couch and onto the floor. Elliot reaches for the bottle, staring at the opaque glass like it will magically refill itself.

"We need more booze" he announces with characteristic assuredness.

Olivia grimaces, but she giggles at the notion. They've been this drunk before, but that was to say good-bye to a case. Saying good-bye to each other makes the inebriation all the more necessary. "God. No more Elliot. I'll throw-up."

Elliot lets the bottle flop back onto the floor. "Come on 'Livia" he slurs. "One more shot. I'll sing for you again."

Olivia slides towards him, her cheek coming to rest on his shoulder. "Then I'll really throw-up."

He smiles, his face breaking into lines. "After 13 years of O'Malley's piss-flavored beer, you don't throw-up Liv." Elliot's breath is on her cheek, her hair tickling his nose.

"Not in front of you" Olivia slurs, "Never in front of you. I have—had—a reputation to keep up after all."

Through his vodka-addled mind, Elliot acknowledges that Liv has always played close to the vest when it came to her own weaknesses. But, one incident comes to mind when she forgot herself. "That's a lie. You've been sick in front of me"

Olivia's head tilts off his shoulder, slides towards his lap. He relaxes into the back of the couch, brushes the stale cupcake crumbs from his lap and allows her head to rest there.

"Bullshit Elliot, when?" she demands, settling against him.

"The Victor Spicer case."

He feels her heart skips a beat, and he rest his hand in her hair to calm her.

"That was a difficult time Elliot" she whispers. Her defense is honest.

"It's going to be harder now, Liv" he says. He wonders if he should tell her the rest of his secrets, if he should divulge just how much of an asshole he's going to be.

"Elliot, I'm either too drunk or not drunk enough to continue that conversation."

He's silent then, running his hands through her hair. Olivia doesn't do hard liquor, her past atones for her reasoning and he honestly wouldn't expect anything less. Yet as soon as he told her he was leaving her she reached for something she's always feared. He decides in that moment that he won't let her know he will be breaking all contact after this. He'll let her have a bit of hope, if only to keep her hand off that high shelf.

"What do you want to talk about then, Olivia?" he asks her gently, tangling and untangling his fingers in her hair.

"I don't care Elliot," Olivia yawns, "But entertain me. It's my birthday after all."

Elliot smiles, and decides that he'll let her have this moment. For everything he used to be, he'll make sure he leaves this part of him with her. "You ever think about what Cragen would look like with hair?"

"Oh god Elliot" Olivia says, giggling. "I didn't until now."

"Now I'm not the only one" Elliot says, laughing quietly. Anything louder would be offensive. "I'm going to miss you Olivia."

Olivia shifts on his lap, too drunk to sit up and employ her better sensibilities and yet sober enough to know she never wants to leave this moment. "I'll be around Elliot" she says, and she quickly wipes a few tears from her eyes before they mar his jeans.

"Yes you will Liv" Elliot says, and he sees the tears. He feels her breath hitch. She'll be around, but he can't bear to say that he won't. He bends his head down then, and drops a small chaste kiss against her temple. "You'll be fine Liv. You'll be just fine."


	4. Part 4

_You'll be fine, Liv. You'll be just fine._

His last words to her sound off in her head like a battle call. Six months ago, when they crashed on her floor after too much vodka and honesty, she'd thought she'd fixed it. He was going to go home and strap on his gun and make sure he turned up to make Benson and Stabler something eternal. But, then she'd felt his lips press gently into her temple and the part of her who knew it was the end started shouting that damn battle cry.

_You'll be fine, Liv. You'll be just fine._

At her birthday party the next day, he'd sat by her and refilled her champagne glass and laughed with who she still considered their co-workers. She'd honestly thought nothing was wrong. Everything he'd said the previous day had to be some pipe dream created from too many double shifts. About a month later she realizes the co-workers that used to be utterly theirs and the job she used to consider an exclusive two-person burden had now become simply hers. Alone.

_You'll be fine Liv. You'll be just fine._

She hated him for attempting to prepare her for his departure. She resented her willingness to sit on her floor and drink with him instead of trying to talk him out of ruining their mutual life. Fueled by this anger, she ignored the rookies when Cragen introduced them. She wanted nothing to do with another family man cum narcotics hotshot trying to tell her he understood her life. Then there was the blond, someone Liv's jealous sensibilities secretly resented for her youth and innocence.

_You'll be fine Liv. You'll be just fine._

Casey returned shortly after that and so did Alex. While Olivia was happy to see her friends, she hated that the reunion included everyone but him. Elliot had left her entirely and all the phone calls in the world wouldn't yield anything but a non-descript voicemail bearing an automated voice and a simple number. He at least had the common courtesy to remove himself from her life, rather than keep coming around to rip open old wounds and suffer in the blood. To their credit, Casey and Alex tried to make up for it, tried to recreate the past for her. They didn't realize he was her past.

_You'll be fine Liv. You'll be just fine._

Then Cragen called her into his office and her heart nearly stopped beating. Her hand on the doorknob, she was praying he was ready to suspend her for her slightly hostile behavior, or bench her for putting in too many hours again. But no, he'd merely asked her to close the door and she'd known. Her head ached through his entire conversation as she held off the tears.

_You'll be fine Liv. You'll be just fine._

Crying in the interrogation room she hated herself, Elliot, Cragen, Jenna and whatever fucked up God had given her Elliot Stabler as a partner. But mostly, she hated her tears because they turned him into a liar. He said she'd be fine, and dammit she owed it to him to prove him right just this once.

_You'll be fine Liv. You'll be just fine._

"Liv, you got a package" Fin says, dropping a hastily stuffed yellow envelope onto her desk. Amaro looks up, his fingers stilling from his daughter's near perfect report card.

"Fan mail?" he asks, watching Liv stare at the package without picking it up. His new partner will never be an open book, but then again, Amaro isn't much of a reader if he doesn't have to be.

"Fan mail is rarely a good thing in SVU" Fin joins. "Does it have a return address?"

Liv doesn't answer or acknowledging anyone, so Amaro reaches over and snatches it off their conjoined desks.

"Nope" Amaro answers, "No address. Guy's got awful handwriting though." His fingers hover over the seal, but Liv reaches back across the desk and snatches the envelope.

"It's my letter" she says.

"It's probably a love letter from the ADA" Amaro says, and Liv shoots him a look that could kill.

"Are we in second grade?" she demands.

"No, but you have a second grader to interview." Cragen's voice startles them all. "Fin, Rollins, you go to PS 113 and light a fire under CSU. Amaro, the parents are waiting for you in interrogation one. Liv, can you take the kid?"

"Sure, I'll be right there" Olivia says, forcing the professionalism out.

Everyone else stands to do their jobs, grabbing coats and logging out of computers. Amaro shoots her a look which she deflects with a smile, and he's pacified enough to go do his job. She waits until the room is clear before gently lifting the flap with her nail. She knows that no matter what it contains, there's a victim waiting and she can only afford herself so many moments to be selfish. The flap lifts, and a gold chain and pendant crash into her palm.

_You'll be fine Liv. You'll be just fine._

Olivia's heart stops for a moment. She recognizes this, and she can't believe it's in her hand. Almost seven years ago she'd borrowed his jacket and this pendant had been in his pocket. It was still in her possession when he was shot during their first case with Dana Lewis. Visiting him in the hospital, he'd jokingly claimed it was because she'd filched his pendant. She'd believed him though. She'd taken this simple gold chain as a sign her partner would always be safe regardless of how well she watched his back. Now his protectiveness rests in her hand.

_You'll be fine Liv. You'll.. be... just... fine._

The battle call quiets in her head, becoming nothing more than a whisper because for the first time ever, she believes him.


End file.
